6 posts tagged “australia”

I'm desparately trying to avoid any reference to the current federal election campaign in Australia.  But this is too good to pass up.

Malcolm Turnbull flips 2 children

Politicians are very good at spin, but The Honourable Malcolm Turnbull MP got a little bit out of hand with this yesterday when he flipped 2 children over at Fox Studios in Sydney. 

Now Mr Turnbull is a big bloke.  I actually met him once, and i suspect that he has similar weight battles to me because he is of strikingly similar build.

But blokes of our dimensions usually (or at least should) know how to harness and control The Awesome Power At Their Command.  Not so Malcolm.

The ensuing photo op of weeping children, paramedics tending broken limbs (no!  Just joking here) must be every politician's public relations nightmare.

• "Turnbull's powerful spin leaves toddlers in tears" by Bonny Symons-Brown, News.com.au, 19th October 2007.  (Includes a link to a great gallery of a photo sequence of the event.)
• Australian Electoral Commission's 2007 election website
• Google website for Australian federal election 2007
• ABC[Australia]: election 2007 website
• FederalElection.com.au

The Yellow House, by Vincent van Gogh

Pauline & I today ran a little errand to Kiama - a very nice town about 20

Kiama Post Office

minutes' drive south of us.

There is a scene on the street corner outside the local post office that reminds me of the painting The Yellow House by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) - depicting the building where he lodged in the French town of Arles. The scene is complete with a railway bridge a little bit up the street. 

All we need is for Australia Post to paint the building yellow.

What do you think?  (Please excuse the pixellated picture from the el cheapo camera-in-phone.)

The Australian National Census is taking place today. 

This fact is probably of supreme indifference to many Chronicle readers, but wait!  I have finally discovered why I never had to queue for a staff loo (= line up for the staff rest room) in all the years I was a librarian.

Apparently, the 2001 Census reveals that 83.1% of Australia's 10,313 librarians (at Census date) were female.

So my suspicions are confirmed - there always were more women than men where I worked. (I was going to say "ladies" but thought better of it.)

Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz

Today, Pauline & I had the good fortune to see the arena production of The Boy From Oz at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

This event literally took our breath away.  All the hype surrounding  Sydney lad & Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts graduate Hugh Jackman (local lad made good) bringing Peter Allen (rural New South Wales lad made good) back to life in this event is entirely justified.

Whilst it might be dificult to define a person's "star quality" - an ability to hold an audience, be it 6 or be it 18,000 (as it was yesterday) - you need look no further than Hugh jackman to witness this.

Certainly the production lifted this, but I would daresay that every performer and every crew member in this show lifted his / her individual game through the association with Mr Jackman.

And part of the feat achieved is his interpretation of the life of another famous Australian, Peter Allen.

When I wasn't being sucked in by his living breathing rendition of Mr Allen (and the fact that Mr Jackman looks nothing like him is entirely irrelevant - in fact, this is further testimony to Mr Jackman's powers), I was marvelling at being in the presence of Mr Jackman.

Normally, one might expect one view to conflict with another;  however, yesterday, this did not matter.

Another bonus of this show is to have Mr Allen's output of songs contextualised as being autobiographical.  Whilst Not The Boy Next Door seems obvious, the autobiographical point others like I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love was missed by your humble reviewer until yesterday.

Its a dreadful shame that Broadway audiences were deprived of hearing Tenterfield Saddler;  the amount of autobiographical background, together with the poignancy of this song, is quite moving.

Mr Jackman also has a great wit.  At least some of the repartee with the audience could not possibly have been scripted in advance (either that or he is an even better actor than I even now realise);  yet it was hugely funny and he never dropped his character for a moment.

Yet another big show-stopping momen t was provided by Colleen Hewitt (people of my vintage will remember her as the TV Week Queen of Pop in the 1970s).  She played the part of Peter's strong mum, standing up to a brutal husband and accepting he rson's homosexuality. 

Her rendition of Don't Cry Out Loud (another Peter Allen song, much to my surprise) also had us on our feet.  (Usually I am suspicious of standing ovations, but I did not begrudge any here.) Ms Hewitt's version of this was far superior to the Broadway cast recording version (which we had blasting at home all today); the American singer is plainly uncomfortable with replicating an Australian accent, and it shows - with her performance vacillating between Eliza Doolittle and the Mother Superior from The Sound Of Music.  Her preoccupation with the accent stymied her from putting her heart into this song - something with which Ms Hewitt had no problems.

(In fairness to the Broadway album, the Australian accent is very hard to replicate.  We usually end up sounding either like Cockneys or New Zealanders. Even Meryl Streep, usually an expert with accents, couldn't get this in Evil Angels [ re-titled A Cry In The Dark in the USA].)

Peter Allen's mum sounded rather ballsy (if i ma y say that on Vox).  When he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, he phoned the news through to his mum who, he reported, had tears in her eyes - but that may have bee nfrom the onions in the dog' dinner she was preparing at the time of the call.  (This anecdote is recounted from Stephen Maclean's book Peter Allen: The boy from Oz, from which much of the show was drawn.)

Peter Allen originally played the Sydney Entertainment Centre for its official opening in 1983.  This venue was also the scene of his final concert on Australia Day (January 26), 1992.  These facts are exceptionally appropriate for an exceptional show featuring a highly exceptional talent

The review in The Sydney Morning Herald stated that this is the best musical you could ever hope to see.  Usually I am suspicious of such hyperbole, but for this I can but helplessly and happily concur.

• News item in The Australian newspaper (link in NewsVine)
  
• Review in The Sydney Morning Herald (link in NewsVine) (access might be conditional upon registration)

An item appeared in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald,  written by an enthusiast of Crown Princess Mary of Denmark (formerly Miss Mary Donaldson of the Australian State of Tasmania).

Danish Royal couple observe kangaroos

I'd like to link to this article here because:

1. To illustrate what I understand to be the difference between a blogger and a bulletin-board reader.  The writer of this article appears (by my understanding) to be misusing the term "blogger". I understand a blogger writes a weblog (such as you are reading now - although I desparately try to avoid using that term, preferring the word "journal"), whereas a reader of web-based bulletin-boards does exactly that - read web-based bulletin-boards
2. To show how fanatical these royal watchers are.  A thread on the poor lady's handbags, for heaven's sake, as well as her dog and her double-ear-piercing. 

To be fair I should qualify point # 2 by saying that:

a.)  My lack of enthusiasm with royal families rigourously excludes those nations with an indigenous royal family (such as Great Britain, Japan or Denmark).  If those good folk grew up with that system, them good luck to them.  Its the transplanted versions (such as we have in Australia) that worry me, particularly since many of the current members of the British Royal Family have failed to provide the good example in conduct and attitude that I was taught in school (and a Catholic school, I might add!) made them so ideal for the job.

b.) I recognise the previous role of the British monarchy in the establishment of our legal system and our public values, and in no way do I wish to devalue this.  But given that Australia is presently stuck with a constitutional monarchy that appears to be suffering from Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, perhaps we could do no worse than trade in the troubled British Royal Family for the Danes?  After all, we even have a (former) Australian in the Danish version of "The Firm".

• Published article
• Link in NewsVine
  

This post is now located here.